Triona McCarthy's Most Wanted

Triona McCarthy

Green Goddess

Regular readers will remember how I referred to my late sister, Tricia, as Tree-Hugging Tricia, because of her love of all things environmentally friendly.

I, on the other hand, could get completely seduced by pretty packaging.

However, when I was pregnant, I really started to get interested in natural and organic beauty products that have minimal impact on the environment and are super-safe on the skin.

So now I try to champion them wherever possible, just like beauty gurus, Josephine Fairley and Sarah Stacey, the ladies behind the biggest selling series of beauty books in the world – the Beauty Bible books.

The latest in the series, The Ultimate Natural Beauty Bible, has a handy new daisy rating system because there are different sorts of 'green' beauties.

Some products are 99 per cent natural and certified organic – they are marked with three daisies.

Two daisies are given to plant-derived products with no synthetics or petrochemicals, while the one-daisy group are mostly natural, with a small percentage of synthetic and/or petrochemical ingredients.

I love all the tips featured as well as – for the first time – the recipes included to try in my kitchen. So, if you're a beauty junkie with a conscience, you should add this new book to your library.

Pillow Talk

I'd love it if my pillow could collect my dreams every night. Then, in the morning, when I wake up, I could plug my pillow into my computer and watch them all over again.

That would be fine – except, every once in a while, I have this dream that I'm eating lots of marshmallows. Num, num, num, num!

Then, in the morning, when I wake up, my pillow is gone. Hahahahahaha!

Redken's Pillow Proof collection (see what I did there – seamless) consists of two brand-new, blowout styling products.

The Blow Dry Express Primer, left, €19, helps protect hair from heat damage, and it also speeds up the blow-drying process.

The Two Day Extender, €19, meanwhile, helps to keep my blow-dry looking fresh for a few days after I get it done.

So, it's like a fancy dry shampoo, really.

If, like me, you blow-dry and style your hair a lot, these are must haves.

Cult Product

Philosophy's Time in a Bottle, right, €69.90, from Arnotts, is nothing short of a modern-day skin miracle product.

This serum is unlike other serums, in that it goes beyond treating just the signs of ageing. It targets the source: the DNA of the skin.

Once you are ready to start using this, just pour the vial of potent vitamin C into the main bottle, so that the vitamin C will remain at its highest potency, and you will get maximum results.

A month of usage showed that the pigmentation I had from pregnancy had improved dramatically, while some minor scarring on my cheek from squeezing a spot – please don't judge me – has now completely vanished.

Triona's Most Wanted

I popped along to the Dawson Spa, formerly known as the Mandala Spa, recently, to give my skin a bit of a boost and get it glowing like actress Rachel Weisz, left.